Pushing Dilaudid?

Nurses Medications

Published

Hello everyone,

I've worked at two hospitals in my career. The first one where I was precepted I was taught to hang dilaudid in a 50cc bag over 15 minutes to avoid giving the pt a high and perhaps snowing them. At this new place I work they all push it. We have a lot of drug seekers that come in, the nurses push (often high doses) of dilaudid, then I'm their nurse and they complain because I hang it. My take is that they are mad because they aren't getting a rush. I am not comfortable pushing, for example 4mg of dilaudid. In my previous experience when hanging it people got effective more long term relief when I hung it. Now I'm questioning it as I want to give the drug appropriately. It says in the drug book that it can be pushed over 2-5 minutes but it says nothing about hanging it. Just out of curiosity, how do you all give IV narcotics?

So what do nurses do in this scenario? Sit in the room until the bag finishes transfusing? Or is there some sort of apparatus with a lock they can secure it in?

Interesting, I've never heard of piggy backing dilauded. I have always given it IV push or through a PCA

Specializes in NICU.

Weird. I work on a surgical unit.

We just piggyback it...why would I need to sit with the patient? Unless you think patients would figure out how to disassemble the pump and overdose themselves. I guess we just trust our patients? I've never heard of it being a problem and it honestly never even crossed my mind until mentioned here. Wouldn't pushing it take longer? I just piggyback it and move on to the next thing...takes 5 seconds.

Interesting the differences in practice..(I'm in Canada)

I realize this is old but I've worked risk management and if you're administering medication, especially a narcotic not in line with your hospital policy it could potentially hit your licensing agency and get you fired if any situation came up. If neither the drug books or hospital policy support what you're doing, you're following your own policy which doesn't hold up in investigation or court.

Leaving a narcotic accessible in any form is not good.

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